IBM India Expands Beyond Metros, Tapping Tier‑2 Cities for AI and Innovation Growth

IBM India is actively expanding into tier-2 cities such as Lucknow, Kochi, Ahmedabad, and Pune, positioning them as hubs for AI, GenAI, cybersecurity, and sustainable IT development. This move is designed to tap into local talent pools, foster innovation ecosystems, and provide employees with better work-life balance compared to congested metros.

According to the past reports, IBM India’s expansion into tier‑2 cities include new software labs in Pune, Lucknow, and Kochi. IBM later issued formal announcements, including the August 2026 press release on its Visakhapatnam FutureNow Centre, and interviews with Sandip Patel (IBM India MD). 

IBM’s Tier-2 Strategy

• Diversification of talent hubs
  IBM aims to reduce over-concentration in metros like Bengaluru and Mumbai by spreading operations across smaller cities. This ensures resilience and access to untapped talent pools.
• Local talent integration
  Regional engineering and technical colleges provide a steady stream of skilled graduates. IBM has found “amazing talent” in these cities, fueling its software labs and innovation centres.
• Academic partnerships
  Collaboration with universities strengthens research and development, particularly in AI and automation.
• Government collaboration
  Example: IBM’s AI GovTech Centre of Excellence in Lucknow, developed with the Uttar Pradesh government, focuses on public-sector AI solutions.
• Work-life balance
  Employees benefit from shorter commutes, integrated IT parks, and residential communities, making these cities attractive for long-term careers.

Key Expansion Locations

City	Focus Areas	Highlights
Lucknow	GenAI, agentic AI, GovTech	New AI-powered software lab; Centre of Excellence with UP govt.
Kochi	WatsonX, AI, automation	Fastest-growing IBM lab; strong collaboration culture; leadership roles emerging.
Ahmedabad	AI product development	Doubling hiring; vibrant ecosystem with universities.
Pune	GenAI, cybersecurity, sustainability	Software labs tied to academia and local tech communities.

Why Tier-2 Cities Matter

• Cost efficiency
  Lower operational costs compared to metros.
• Talent retention
  Many employees are natives returning home, reducing attrition.
• Innovation ecosystems
  Business partners and startups co-locate, enabling co-creation.
• Employee satisfaction
  Better lifestyle options and reduced commute stress.

Risks & Challenges

• Infrastructure gaps
  Some tier-2 cities may lack the scale of IT infrastructure found in metros.
• Global client perception
  Clients may initially prefer established metro hubs.
• Talent scalability
  While talent is abundant, scaling specialized skills (e.g., quantum computing, advanced AI) may take time.

NASA & IBM Fuse 30 Data Layers into AI Moon Map, Unlocking Lunar Future

NASA is now using artificial intelligence to study the Moon in a whole new way. Working with IBM and top universities, they’ve built the NASA‑IBM Lunar Foundation Model — one of the first open‑source AI tools made just for lunar science. It’s trained on years of data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and is freely available online. Anyone can explore it on Hugging Face or test the full code on GitHub, opening lunar research to the world.

NASA and IBM have released an open-source Lunar Foundation Model that fuses over 30 data layers from four missions into one AI map, improving lunar mapping accuracy by up to 23% and enabling better detection of ice, craters, and volcanic features. This breakthrough is directly tied to planning future lunar bases near the Moon’s south pole.

The NASA‑IBM Lunar Foundation Model transforms decades of Moon data into a discovery engine, revealing patterns no single mission could uncover.

A 10-image mosaic captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Narrow Angle Camera between June 2012 and April 2016 showing the volcanic feature Mons Rümker and its surrounding mare plains. NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

NASA’s AI ecosystem now spans Earth, Moon, and Sun: the Prithvi Model for geospatial Earth observation, the Lunar Foundation Model for Moon science, and the Surya Model for heliophysics. Together, they represent a “5+1” strategy to embed AI into every major science domain, enabling faster discoveries and operational applications.

Prithvi Model (Earth Observation)

• First orbital AI foundation model: Deployed aboard the ISS and South Australia’s Kanyini satellite in 2026.
• Training data: 13+ years of Harmonized Landsat & Sentinel‑2 imagery.
• Applications: Flood mapping, wildfire scar detection, crop yield prediction, land‑use monitoring.
• Strength: Performs analyses in orbit, reducing bandwidth needs by processing data before transmission.
• Open-source: Available on Hugging Face, enabling global researchers to fine‑tune for disaster response and environmental monitoring.

Lunar Foundation Model (Moon Science)

• Developed by NASA & IBM: Trained on 2M+ lunar image tiles from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
• Capabilities:
  • Crater mapping for geological dating.
  • Ice prospectivity in permanently shadowed regions.
  • Volcanic feature detection (irregular mare patches).
  • Surface change detection (e.g., SpaceX rocket impact).
• Impact: Supports Artemis mission planning, safe landing site selection, and resource utilization for future lunar bases.

Surya Model (Heliophysics)

• Training data: 9 years of Solar Dynamics Observatory data.
• Architecture: Spatiotemporal transformer with spectral gating, designed for solar flare forecasting.
• Applications:
  • Forecasting solar flares up to 2 hours ahead.
  • Predicting solar wind speed and irradiance.
  • Tracking active regions and coronal mass ejections.
• Performance: Surpassed existing flare prediction benchmarks by 16%, offering early warnings for satellites, power grids, and aviation.
• Open-source: Hosted on Hugging Face with GitHub code, encouraging global collaboration.

Comparative Snapshot

Model	Domain	Training Data	Key Applications
Prithvi	Earth	Landsat + Sentinel‑2 (13 yrs)	Floods, crops, wildfires, land use
Lunar Foundation	Moon	LRO imagery (2M tiles)	Craters, ice, volcanic features
Surya	Sun	SDO (9 yrs, multi‑wavelength)	Solar flares, winds, irradiance

What the Model Does

• 30 data layers: Integrated from nine instruments across four missions, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and GRAIL.
• Multimodal AI system: Combines thermal, topographic, gravitational, and multispectral data into one unified map.
• Accuracy gains: Ice prospectivity 22% reduction in error; crater detection 19% higher accuracy at 100m resolution using half the training data; volcanic mapping 3% improvement.

Built mainly on data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the model is freely available on Hugging Face, with its full codebase open on GitHub for anyone to test and experiment.

Why It Matters

• Lunar ice: Crucial for water, oxygen, and rocket fuel production. Permanently shadowed craters near the poles are prime targets.
• Safer landings: AI helps identify stable terrain for Artemis missions and future bases.
• Geological insights: Crater and volcanic mapping deepens understanding of the Moon’s history.
• Open-source availability: Released via Hugging Face and GitHub, enabling universities, startups, and smaller space agencies to build on it.

Key Comparisons

Feature	Improvement vs Baseline	Impact
Ice prospectivity	22% RMSE reduction	Better targeting of polar ice deposits
Crater detection	+19% accuracy, +19% mAP	Safer landing site selection
Volcanic mapping	+3% IoU	Improved geological history analysis
Training efficiency	Half the data needed	Accessible for smaller research teams

Challenges Ahead

• Domain shift: AI must adapt across different orbital sensors.
• Shadowed regions: Extremely cold, dark craters remain hard to study.
• Validation: Ground truth data from future missions is still needed.

Context for India

This development complements India’s Space Vision 2047, where AI-driven exploration is central to lunar resource utilization and base planning. It also parallels ISRO-backed projects like CraterMorpho, showing how global collaborations are converging on AI-powered planetary science.

Quantum Leap: IBM’s Nighthawk r2 Breaks Barriers

IBM has just unveiled the Nighthawk r2, its fastest quantum processor to date, capable of executing over 100,000 circuits per second—25 times faster than the Heron fleet—thanks to a groundbreaking dissipative qubit reset system. With 120 programmable qubits and advanced couplers, it marks a major 2026 milestone in IBM’s quantum roadmap.

Key Highlights of IBM Nighthawk r2

• Fastest IBM processor: Executes 100,000+ circuits per second, a 25x speed boost over Heron (~4,000 circuits/sec).
• Qubit architecture: 120 programmable qubits, 218 inter-qubit couplers, 120 independent reset elements (458 total quantum elements).
• Dissipative reset innovation: Drops qubit relaxation time (T1) from ~200 µs to ~25 ns, reduces idle times to ~1 µs, cuts initialization errors by ~25x.
• Complex circuit capability: Accurate execution of circuits with 7,500+ gates, a critical 2026 roadmap milestone.
• Applications: Real-time simulations, quantum error correction, and fault-tolerant computing research.

Comparison: Nighthawk r2 vs Heron

Feature	Nighthawk r2	Heron
Qubit Count	120	133 (Heron fleet)
Circuit Throughput	100,000+/sec	~4,000/sec
Reset System	Dissipative reset (25 ns T1)	Conditional reset (~200 µs T1)
Initialization Error	~25x lower	Higher
Gate Fidelity	Maintains Heron-class	Standard
Roadmap Milestone	7,500+ gate circuits	~1,000–2,000 gate circuits

Strategic Context

• Global Race: IBM’s Nighthawk r2 positions it ahead of rivals by combining speed, scale, and error correction.
• India’s Relevance: With Amaravati’s upcoming IBM Quantum System Two (156-qubit), India integrates into IBM’s global quantum ecosystem.
• Future Outlook: IBM’s roadmap targets fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2029, with modular cryogenic systems already being tested.

Risks & Challenges

• Hardware complexity: 458 physical quantum elements increase engineering demands.
• Error correction gap: Scaling error correction to thousands of qubits remains unresolved.
• Global competition: Chinese labs and Google are already testing 1,000+ qubit systems, so IBM must accelerate deployment.

IBM Ventures Invests in BQP: Quantum Physics Acceleration Reaches Production

BQP Founding Team

• IBM Ventures has invested in BQP, bringing total funding to $8M and backing BQP's expansion from engineering design into real-time operational decisions. The investment extends a technical relationship that began in 2023, when BQP joined the IBM Quantum Network.


• Classical solvers leave roughly 85% of a GPU's floating-point capacity idle. BQP's flagship platform, BQPhy®, puts that capacity to work, resolving full-fidelity physics inside operational decision windows.


• BQPhy® is in production with aerospace and defense customers, with contracted and committed revenue up 8x since BQP's 2025 seed round and 3x customer growth.

BQP, the physics acceleration company, today announced a strategic investment from IBM Ventures, the venture capital arm of IBM. The investment brings BQP's total funding to $8M and funds BQPhy®'s expansion from engineering design into operational deployment, scaling delivery and go-to-market as BQP expands beyond aerospace and defense. Venn10 Capital and existing investor Monta Vista Capital also participated. Since its 2025 seed round, backed by New York State's venture arm and other institutional investors, BQP has grown contracted and committed revenue 8x, tripling its customer base and growing platform users 20x.

"An engineer with a deadline doesn't care where the answer came from. They care that it arrived in time and that the physics is right. The industry spent years treating this as a hardware problem that warranted faster chips, more of them, and eventually a quantum one. But it was always a software problem," said Abhishek Chopra, Founder and CEO of BQP.

Chopra added: "We spent those years earning our way into engineering workflows, so when the quantum machines are ready, nothing about how those teams work has to change. That's the path IBM has watched us build since 2023, and this investment says it's the right one."

Mission-critical decisions have deadlines, and high-fidelity physics simulations rarely meet them. More hardware has not closed the gap. Classical physics solvers leave roughly 85% of a GPU's floating-point capacity idle, because the sparse iterative methods underneath simulation are bound by memory access rather than compute. Teams choose between accurate models that return the right answer too late, or fast methods that answer on time by skipping the physics, leaving hidden risk behind over-engineered safety margins.

BQPhy® removes this trade-off between speed and accuracy. Its physics-AI optimization engine resolves the full physics inside the decision window, using the GPU capacity classical solvers leave idle. The platform delivers this through two solvers that share a single SDK, integrated natively into MATLAB as a MathWorks Connections Program partner, with standard APIs for Python, Julia, and other frameworks. This enables engineers to get the answers without leaving the tools they already use.

QuantumNOW™ is in production today on customers' existing CPU and GPU infrastructure, and each deployment maps which problems belong on a QPU - making QuantumMAX™, BQP's quantum-native solver in development, an on-ramp rather than a bet. It is written for heterogeneous CPU-GPU-QPU execution rather than a single hardware target.

"What stood out with BQP is that users don't have to change how they work to get quantum-accelerated results. Their proven track record of developing software that helps enterprises build a practical path toward hybrid quantum-classical computing is what gives IBM Ventures confidence in making this investment," said Emily Fontaine, Global Head of IBM Ventures.

In aerospace and defense, BQP's furthest-along work is in space. Under an SBIR with the U.S. Space Force and SpaceWERX, extending earlier work with the SDA TAP Lab, BQPhy®'s physics AI propagates a catalog of more than 3,000 space objects in under a second, roughly 250x faster than the open-source Orekit solver by compressing the model using proprietary algorithms. BQP also holds a CRADA with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Aerospace Systems Directorate and has demonstrated BQPhy® on radio-frequency signal problems for the tactical edge with NavalX. With Modovolo, BQP built a system-level propulsion optimization for UAV mission profiles, expanding from three design variables to more than twelve and tuning propeller and motor as a single unit; integration took roughly one week through the API.

In energy, BQP is applying the same platform to commercial systems, with EV battery thermal management work funded by India's Ministry of Heavy Industries and the Indian School of Business.

The same engine that predicts where a satellite is heading also predicts how heat moves through a battery pack or a data center rack: different industries with the same high-dimensional physics that has to resolve before the decision window closes.

QuantumNOW™ is in production; QuantumMAX™ is proving out. In work presented at USNC/TAM 2026, BQP ran QuantumMAX™ on quantum hardware for uncertainty quantification in computational fluid dynamics, reaching the same accuracy as classical Monte Carlo with fewer samples on a benchmark-scale problem. BQP's research is published in IEEE, AIAA, and APL Quantum, with best paper awards at AeroCon 2026 and the IEEE Space, Aerospace and Defence Conference (SPACE 2026).

About BQP

BQP (formerly BosonQ Psi) is a physics acceleration company applying quantum algorithms to mission-critical operational decisions. Its unified Quantum-HPC platform, BQPhy®, pairs physics AI surrogates with an optimization solver, delivering results on today's CPU and GPU infrastructure through QuantumNOW™ with quantum-native acceleration in development through QuantumMAX™ - both on a single SDK. Headquartered in Syracuse, New York, with offices in the UK and India. Learn more at https://www.bqpsim.com

IBM, Together AI Launch $240M NVIDIA-Powered Inference Cluster on IBM Cloud

NVIDIA HGX B300

• First large-scale inference cluster with Together AI on IBM Cloud using NVIDIA HGX B300 systems to help enterprises run AI workloads, designed for fast and efficient production

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a collaboration with Together AI to deliver IBM and NVIDIA AI infrastructure. Under a multi-year $240M agreement between IBM and Together AI, IBM is positioned to deploy a large cluster of NVIDIA HGX B300 systems on IBM Cloud with expected availability in Q1 2027. Together AI will use this cluster to provide open-source model inference. This deployment is the first dedicated, large-scale cluster built for inference on IBM Cloud using HGX B300 systems and NVIDIA Spectrum-XTM Ethernet networking. According to NVIDIA, it is built to deliver 30x more AI factory output compared to prior generations.

This collaboration aims to enable Together AI to deliver better performance and token economics to enterprises as they look to efficiently scale their AI deployments. Together AI is built on the principle that open-source models are essential for the future of AI and developers should be able to build using open, modular stacks. The company recently raised an $800M Series C financing round at an $8.3B valuation to expand its AI Native Cloud and its platform spans capabilities across inference, training, fine tuning, and agentic workflows. The company reports that it has seen significant momentum for its inference product, now serving 400 trillion tokens monthly.

Together AI selected IBM with NVIDIA because of their innovative product roadmaps and their ability to deliver GPU capacity at the pace required for rapid AI scaling and lowest token cost. Building on IBM's expertise in delivering enterprise-grade cloud capabilities, this collaboration aims to help Together AI to continue its expansion into the enterprise space while making open-source AI more accessible to developers and enterprises around the world.

"Enterprises want the performance of the best frontier models without the closed-model price tag, and that only works if the infrastructure underneath is fast and reliable at scale," said Vipul Ved Prakash, CEO at Together AI. "Working alongside IBM with NVIDIA gives us that foundation. This cluster lets us bring production-grade inference to more companies, faster, and it's a big step in our push to make open-source AI the obvious choice for enterprises."

IBM and NVIDIA Expand Collaboration to Power the Next Wave of AI Innovation

"Enterprises are in a race to adopt agentic AI at scale to drive real business outcomes," said Alan Peacock, General Manager of IBM Cloud. "IBM and NVIDIA are delivering scalable, economical, enterprise-grade AI infrastructure that can help Together AI accelerate innovation for the next generation of AI infrastructure." 

"AI factories are becoming essential enterprise infrastructure—like electricity and telecommunications—turning compute and data into intelligence," said Dion Harris, Senior Director, HPC and AI Infrastructure Solutions, NVIDIA. "With NVIDIA HGX B300 systems and NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking on IBM Cloud, IBM and Together AI will deliver an accelerated computing platform to help enterprises deploy open-source AI with the performance, efficiency and scale required for real-time AI services."

This work is the latest example of a larger collaboration between IBM and NVIDIA, who continue to work together to advance AI across infrastructure and software, to deliver performance and efficiency for enterprise and startup clients. A hybrid environment on IBM Cloud powered by NVIDIA GPUs connected with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking and Together AI's inference platform gives organizations a reliable foundation to build, deploy and scale AI systems. Additionally, IBM and NVIDIA recently announced progress across GPU-native data analytics, unstructured data extraction, on-premises and cloud infrastructure, and consulting services. These advancements are designed to help organizations operationalize AI at scale. For more information about the IBM and NVIDIA collaboration, visit www.ibm.com/products/gpu-ai-accelerator/nvidia.

Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain a competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

About Together AI

Together AI is the AI Native Cloud, combining state-of-the-art open-source models, high-performance infrastructure, and frontier research in AI efficiency and scalability. Founded in 2022, Together AI powers over a million of developers and some of the world's most demanding AI workloads, delivering production-scale inference, training, and reinforcement learning for the next generation of AI-native companies.

IBM and Sarvam Collaborate to Advance Full Stack Sovereignty for AI, Sovereignty for Government and Regulated Enterprises Across India

• IBM Sovereign Core and Sarvam's India stack to help organizations operationalize sovereign AI aligned with India's governance and sovereignty requirement

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Sarvam, India's full-stack sovereign AI company, today announced a collaboration to advance the development and adoption of sovereign AI technologies in India. Through the collaboration, IBM and Sarvam will work together to demonstrate and pilot technologies and solutions targeting industry use cases relevant for central and state governments, public sector organisations, and regulated enterprises across India. 

This initiative aims to accelerate the adoption of trusted, governed, and sovereign AI capabilities across industry and public sector ecosystems through innovation pilots, solution accelerators, technical advisory, and knowledge-sharing initiatives. It brings together IBM Sovereign Core, IBM's AI-ready sovereign-by-design software that enables full control over data, operations and governance, with Sarvam's Sovereign AI stack, which includes reasoning models and India-first language and voice AI trained from scratch in India. The combined offering is purpose-built for the public sector and regulated enterprises aligned with the country’s regulatory, security, and operational requirements.

Together, IBM and Sarvam will power use cases like citizen services, grievance redressal, document processing, and administrative workflows on full stack sovereign AI. This ensures accelerated delivery of secure, multilingual, and voice-enabled Government-to-citizen services at scale.

The IBM GovTech AI Innovation Center in Lucknow will serve as a joint incubation and demonstration hub, where government departments, public sector organisations, enterprises and industry stakeholders can work through the technical, operational, and governance requirements of moving AI from pilots into production and explore practical applications of sovereign AI.

Sriram Raghavan, General Manager, IBM Software, India and Software Innovation Lab said, "Sovereign AI is not simply about where AI runs. It is about giving organizations control over how AI is governed, deployed, and operated. IBM Sovereign Core provides an open, enterprise-grade platform and middleware foundation designed to help governments and regulated enterprises scale AI within environments they trust while addressing governance, security, and compliance requirements. By combining these capabilities with Sarvam's India-first AI technologies, we aim to help organizations operationalize sovereign AI and accelerate the journey from experimentation to production-scale outcomes."

“Sovereign AI has to run inside the systems governments and enterprises already depend on, and at the scale at which those systems operate,” said Pratyush Kumar, Co-Founder of Sarvam. "IBM's Sovereign Core gives governments an AI-ready technology foundation they control. Our stack puts models, voice, and language technologies on top of it, so a citizen can access a benefit or resolve a grievance in their own language, on a phone call."

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

IBM’s $70B Wipeout Sends Ripples Through Indian IT Sector

IBM’s stock plunged 25% on July 15, 2026 — its worst single‑day crash since 1968 — wiping out nearly $70 billion in market value and rattling Indian IT stocks like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, and HCLTech, which all fell as investors worried about global tech spending trends.

What Happened to IBM

• Crash magnitude: IBM shares fell 25.21% to $217.07, the steepest drop since January 1968.
• Trigger: Preliminary Q2 2026 results missed Wall Street expectations.
• Revenue: $17.2B vs. $17.9B expected.
• EPS: $2.93 vs. $3.01 expected.
• Business trends: Software revenue up 5% YoY; Consulting flat; Infrastructure down 7%.
• CEO Arvind Krishna’s admission: IBM “did not adapt and move quickly enough” as enterprise customers shifted budgets toward AI infrastructure.

Impact on Indian IT Stocks

• Nifty IT Index: Fell ~2% intraday, underperforming the broader market.
• Major losers: TCS down ~2%; Infosys, Wipro, Persistent Systems, LTIMindtree fell over 1% each.
• ADR impact: Infosys ADR fell 4%, Wipro ADR 3% in U.S. trading.
• Investor sentiment: Concerns over global enterprise software demand and delays in large deals.

Strategic Implications

• Global tech spending shift: Enterprises prioritizing AI hardware over traditional software.
• Indian IT exposure: Heavy reliance on U.S. and European enterprise clients.
• Market caution: Investors brace for weaker outlooks from Indian IT majors.

Snapshot Table

Company	Stock Reaction (July 15, 2026)	Key Concern
IBM	-25.21%	Missed Q2 estimates, AI spending shift
TCS	-2%	Demand uncertainty in enterprise software
Infosys	-1.46% (ADR -4%)	Weak global tech budgets
Wipro	-0.76% (ADR -3%)	Delays in large deals
HCLTech	-0.12%	Exposure to infrastructure slowdown
Persistent Systems	-0.82%	Caution on consulting demand

Key Takeaway

IBM’s historic crash signals a structural pivot in enterprise IT spending toward AI infrastructure, raising red flags for Indian IT firms that depend on global software and consulting demand.

IBM & Red Hat Invest $5B to Secure Open Source Software in AI Era

IBM and Red Hat’s Project Lightwell is being positioned as a landmark effort to secure open-source software in the age of AI-driven cyber threats. Rather than treating vulnerabilities as isolated incidents, Lightwell embeds remediation directly into enterprise workflows, ensuring that fixes are not only discovered but also deployed seamlessly across production environments.

At its core, Lightwell operates as an enterprise clearinghouse. This means it coordinates vulnerability disclosures, validates patches, and manages lifecycle fixes across the open-source ecosystem. Enterprises can integrate Lightwell into their existing build tools—such as Maven, Nexus, or Artifactory—by redirecting them to Red Hat’s secure registry. With a single configuration change, organizations gain access to a catalog of more than 6,500 digitally signed, remediated dependencies. These are backported to the exact versions running in production, eliminating the need for disruptive upgrades that often stall patch adoption.

The initiative is powered by a combination of frontier AI models and 20,000 engineers. AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and triage, while human experts validate and remediate issues with enterprise-grade rigor. This dual approach is critical because AI alone can generate false positives or incomplete fixes, but when paired with human oversight, it becomes a force multiplier for security.

Lightwell is structured around two major offerings. The Lightwell Network, already live, provides enterprises with immediate access to remediated dependencies. The Clearinghouse Premier, currently in limited rollout, acts as a trusted intermediary for patch embargoes and vertical threat coordination. Financial services firms are the first adopters, with expansion planned into healthcare, government, and telecom.

The program’s importance lies in its response to AI-accelerated threats. Advanced models can discover thousands of vulnerabilities in minutes, compressing the time between discovery and exploit. For industries like finance and healthcare, where downtime or breaches can have systemic consequences, Lightwell offers a way to maintain operational continuity while staying ahead of attackers.

Partnerships are central to its rollout. Major banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Visa, Citi, and Wells Fargo are early adopters. Deloitte has joined as a collaborator, providing orchestration services, compliance reporting, and Forward Deployed Engineers to ensure validated fixes are deployed at machine speed. This adds a layer of trust and auditability that regulators demand in highly scrutinized sectors.

In essence, Lightwell is not just a patching service—it is a new industry model for securing open source software. By embedding AI-driven remediation into enterprise workflows and coordinating disclosures through a trusted clearinghouse, IBM and Red Hat are attempting to redefine how global industries defend against systemic cyber risks.

IBM, Red Hat, and Palo Alto Networks Expand Project Lightwell to Help Organizations Respond to Software Vulnerabilities

• Collaboration combines vulnerability discovery, virtual patching and software remediation to help organizations reduce the time between vulnerability discovery and protection.

Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Red Hat today announced a collaboration to help organizations identify vulnerabilities early and deploy protections fast across open source software, commercial applications, operational technology (OT) and healthcare technologies. By integrating Palo Alto Networks Virtual Patching capability with Project Lightwell from IBM and Red Hat, the collaboration combines rapid network-level protection with software remediation to help organizations reduce exposure to emerging threats.

AI has supercharged vulnerability discovery, enabling flaws to be identified at unprecedented speed and scale. AI-driven threats can uncover security gaps across codebases far faster than defenders can patch them, exposing organizations to systemic supply-chain risks.

Nikesh Arora, CEO and Chairman of Palo Alto Networks

AI has compressed the window between vulnerability discovery and exploit from weeks to minutes. Traditional patching cannot keep pace. By collaborating with IBM and Red Hat, we are shifting the advantage back to defenders. This powerful combination allows us to neutralize threats in the network while providing uninterrupted business continuity for our global clients.

Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM

IBM established Project Lightwell to secure the open-source software foundation that enterprises rely on every day. By collaborating with Palo Alto Networks, we are extending that security from the source code directly to the network front lines. This joint solution gives our clients exactly what they need to thrive in the AI era: immediate, automated resilience against emerging threats, combined with the rigorous validation required to safely update their core systems.

A Seamless "Shield-and-Fix" Workflow

The collaboration connects IBM and Red Hat’s $5 billion commitment to open-source security via Project Lightwell with Palo Alto Networks’ security platform. This creates a dual-action defense: Palo Alto Networks rapidly deploys a virtual patch at the network layer to block exploit attempts, while IBM and Red Hat’s Project Lightwell offer remediation software for open-source software that customers can test and deploy in their environment.

The collaboration combines vulnerability intelligence, software remediation and network-based protection to help organizations respond quickly to newly discovered vulnerabilities. Key capabilities include:

• Broader Vulnerability Coverage: Protection across open-source software, commercial applications, operational technology (OT) environments and connected devices.
• Preemptive Coverage: Organizations can receive virtual patch protection before official software patches become available, helping reduce exposure while remediation is underway.
• Rapid Protection: When a new vulnerability is discovered, network-level protections can be deployed the same day, with a long-term goal of reducing the time from validated discovery to protection.

The companies also plan to establish secure processes for sharing vulnerability information across participating software vendors, technology providers and security teams. This collaboration is expected to support coordinated vulnerability disclosure, accelerate protection development and provide anonymized telemetry on real-world exploitation attempts.

Expert Deployment via IBM Consulting

To help organizations respond more effectively to newly discovered vulnerabilities, IBM Security Services can also provide advisory and deployment services that help customers identify which vulnerabilities pose the greatest risk to their business and determine the best path to remediation. Working alongside Palo Alto Networks' virtual patching capabilities and Project Lightwell's software remediation capabilities, IBM Security Services can help customers prioritize, deploy and validate protections and fixes across complex environments.

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW), the global AI cybersecurity leader, protects our digital way of life with a comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity solutions and platforms across Network, Cloud, Security Operations, AI and Identity. Trusted by 70,000+ customers and powered by Unit 42 threat intelligence, our AI-driven platforms eliminate complexity, empowering enterprises to modernize with confidence and securing the speed of innovation. Explore the future of security at www.paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks, Prisma, Prisma AIRS, Idira and the Palo Alto Networks logo are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners. Any unreleased services or features (and any services or features not generally available to customers) referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available (or are not yet generally available to customers) and may not be delivered when expected or at all. Customers who purchase Palo Alto Networks applications should make their purchase decisions based on services and features currently generally available.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

About Red Hat

Red Hat is the open hybrid cloud technology leader, delivering a trusted, consistent, and comprehensive foundation for transformative IT innovation and AI applications. Its portfolio of cloud, developer, AI, Linux, automation and application platform technologies enables any application, anywhere—from the datacenter to the edge. As the world's leading provider of enterprise open-source software solutions, Red Hat invests in open ecosystems and communities to solve tomorrow's IT challenges. Collaborating with partners and customers, Red Hat helps them build, connect, automate, secure, and manage their IT environments, supported by consulting services and award-winning training and certification offerings.

IBM and Yotta Partner to Deliver Secure, Sovereign Agentic AI for Enterprises and Government

(L-R) Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia; Sunil Gupta, Co-Founder, Managing Director & CEO, Yotta Data Services; Sriram Raghavan, General Manager, IBM Software, India and Software Innovation Lab

• The collaboration intends to host IBM watsonx Orchestrate on Yotta's Shakti Cloud and bring IBM Sovereign Core to India, enabling enterprises to scale trusted, compliant AI

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Yotta Data Services Private Limited ("Yotta") today announced plans to enter into a strategic partnership to deliver an Agentic AI platform for enterprises and government organisations in India. The platform is proposed to be built using IBM watsonx Orchestrate and deployed on Yotta's Shakti Cloud, to help organisations scale AI adoption while meeting evolving requirements around data residency, security, and regulatory compliance.

As enterprises move from AI experimentation to operational deployment, there is increasing demand for platforms that can orchestrate AI-driven workflows across business functions while maintaining governance and control. The proposed platform will enable organisations to deploy and manage AI agents across IT service management, HR, finance, procurement, and customer support.

As part of the collaboration, IBM and Yotta also intend to bring IBM Sovereign Core onto Yotta's Shakti Cloud. IBM Sovereign Core, now generally available, is a software platform designed to help organisations build and operate AI-ready sovereign environments — delivering continuous compliance monitoring, verifiable control, and governed AI execution across data, operations, technology, and AI. Together, the two offerings are intended to give Indian organisations a complete foundation for deploying agentic AI at scale, without compromising on compliance or control.

"AI innovation in India must be anchored in sovereignty, security, and performance. Together with IBM, we propose to enable enterprises to harness the power of agentic AI on a secure, India-hosted cloud, so they can innovate with confidence while maintaining control over their data and operations," said Sunil Gupta, Co-Founder, Managing Director & CEO, Yotta Data Services.

Yotta's Shakti Cloud provides scalable GPU infrastructure and AI services designed for Indian enterprises. Combined with IBM watsonx Orchestrate — an enterprise agentic AI platform — the proposed solution is intended to help Indian organisations adopt AI with speed and security, enabling AI-driven orchestration that accelerates time-to-value and streamlines operations across functions.

IBM Sovereign Core: Making Digital Sovereignty Operational

IBM Sovereign Core introduces a new model for operational sovereignty, where governance, compliance, and control are built into the system from the start. IBM defines digital sovereignty across four pillars:

• Operational Sovereignty — control over how environments are operated
• Data Sovereignty — control over data at rest, in use, and in motion
• Technology Sovereignty — open, modular architecture that avoids vendor lock-in
• AI Sovereignty — control over where models run and how inference is governed. 

IBM Sovereign Core delivers an integrated software platform combining control plane, identity, security, compliance, and AI execution functions within a single deployment model. Key capabilities include a customer-operated control plane, in-boundary identity and encryption, continuous compliance monitoring and evidence generation, preloaded regulatory frameworks, governed AI execution, and an open, modular architecture built on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI.

By intending to host IBM Sovereign Core on Yotta's Shakti Cloud — an India-based, MeitY-empanelled infrastructure — the partnership aims to deliver a sovereign environment purpose-built for India's regulatory requirements, supporting enterprises and government organisations in meeting data residency mandates, maintaining audit-ready compliance evidence, and deploying AI workloads within defined sovereign boundaries.

"Indian enterprises are increasingly focused on operationalising AI in a way that is secure, governed, and aligned with regulatory expectations. This collaboration will combine IBM's AI capabilities with Yotta's sovereign cloud infrastructure to help organisations scale AI responsibly — embedding sovereignty, governance, transparency, and trust from the outset," said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia.

IBM and Yotta intend to jointly pursue go-to-market initiatives including solution co-creation, proof of concepts, and technical enablement, targeting organisations across BFSI, public sector, manufacturing, and digital-native industries.

About Yotta Data Services Private Limited

Yotta Data Services is a sovereign cloud infrastructure and platform services provider, offering cloud, AI cloud, data centre hosting, connectivity, media tech and cybersecurity services; managed applications; and a wide range of managed IT services. Yotta operates its cloud regions at its hyperscale data centre parks in Panvel (Navi Mumbai) and Greater Noida (Delhi NCR). Yotta's homegrown, open-source-based Sovereign hyperscale cloud, Yntraa, is MeitY empanelled (VCC and GCC). Yotta has also launched Shakti Cloud, a platform providing enterprises with a comprehensive suite of AI services including AI labs, AI workspaces, Shakti Studio AI Inference platform, access to NVIDIA NIM services, and Kubernetes clusters with GPU resources. Yotta is the only NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) across the APAC region to be part of the NVIDIA Exemplar cloud initiative and is one of only six Reference Architecture Platform NCPs globally. For more information, visit www.yotta.com.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

IBM Brings AI Power to Ferrari’s F1 Fan App

IBM has officially debuted new AI-powered features for the Scuderia Ferrari app, timed with the 2026 Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix. Built on IBM watsonx, the update introduces an AI Companion, interactive Game Center, and enhanced Race Center to deepen fan engagement for Ferrari’s 400 million global Tifosi.

Key New Features

• AI Companion (powered by IBM watsonx):
  • Acts as a digital guide for fans
  • Supports conversation-style prompts
  • Provides contextual responses using Ferrari’s racing data
• Game Center:
  • Unified hub for race predictors, quizzes, and challenges
  • Global leaderboards, digital achievements, and badges
  • Social media integration for sharing accomplishments
  • New Countdown Quiz: timed 60-second challenges
• Achievements Tab:
  • Unlock digital badges through participation
  • Easy sharing across social platforms
• Race Center Enhancements:
  • Detailed session timelines from practice to race day
  • Improved real-time driver data
  • Curated insights for deeper fan understanding

Why This Matters

Feature	Impact
AI Companion	Personalized, interactive fan engagement
Game Center	Gamifies race weekends, boosts repeat usage
Countdown Quiz	Adds competitive, timed challenges
Achievements Tab	Encourages social sharing & loyalty
Race Center	Delivers richer, real-time race insights

Strategic Context

• Audience Reach: Ferrari’s app targets nearly 400 million global fans
• Technology Backbone: IBM watsonx + Watsonx Orchestrate ensure contextual, data-driven responses
• Engagement Goal: Move beyond static information to immersive, participatory fan experiences
• Quote from IBM: “By putting AI at the core of the Scuderia Ferrari app experience, we are transforming how millions of Tifosi engage with the sport.” — Jonathan Adashek, SVP Marketing & Communications, IBM

Considerations

• Data Accuracy: AI responses depend on curated Ferrari datasets; misinformation risks must be managed
• Fan Inclusivity: Features must balance hardcore F1 knowledge with accessibility for casual fans
• Global Rollout: Engagement may vary across regions; localization will be key

To summarize, IBM’s AI-powered upgrade transforms the Scuderia Ferrari app into a dynamic, gamified, and personalized platform, aligning with Formula 1’s push for deeper digital fan engagement.

IBM will continue rolling out new features on the Scuderia Ferrari HP app throughout the 2026 season.

Download the redesigned Scuderia Ferrari mobile app, available for mobile devices, in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Click here to learn more about IBM and the Scuderia Ferrari app.

IBM Launches Its First Infrastructure Innovation Center in India to Accelerate Enterprise-Scale AI

Left - Subhathra Srinivasaraghavan, VP ISDL; Right - Sandip Patel, MD

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the launch of its first Infrastructure Innovation Center, the Sangam Infrastructure Innovation Center, housed within its new India Systems Development Lab (ISDL) campus. The center underscores IBM’s continued investment in India as a strategic hub for advanced infrastructure engineering and AI innovation serving both domestic and global markets.

Designed as a collaborative engineering hub, the center will bring together IBM’s systems architects and infrastructure specialists from ISDL to co-create AI solutions with clients, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Global System Integrators (GSIs), Global Capability Centers (GCCs) and ecosystem partners. By bringing together cutting-edge infrastructure technologies, hybrid cloud capabilities and AI solutions under one roof, the center is designed to accelerate the development and deployment of secure, scalable and responsible enterprise AI systems. The initiative supports enterprise transformation in India while contributing to global infrastructure innovation.

"India is at a pivotal moment in its AI journey, and infrastructure will define the pace and scale at which organizations can innovate,” said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia. “Across industries, enterprises in India are modernizing mission-critical systems to become AI-ready. This Center reflects IBM’s long-term commitment to India and strengthens our ability to design, build, and scale infrastructure solutions locally; tailored to India’s unique market needs while contributing to global innovation. As India advances toward becoming a global AI leader, resilient, secure, and high-performance infrastructure will be the bedrock of that transformation.”

Subhathra Srinivasaraghavan, Vice President, IBM India Systems Development Lab, added, “AI is only as powerful as the infrastructure that supports it. From hybrid cloud platforms to data architectures and automation, the backbone of AI lies in robust, secure and scalable infrastructure. This center brings together deep systems engineering expertise and ecosystem collaboration to help clients operationalize AI at scale while ensuring performance, security, governance, and reliability across mission-critical environments.”

The launch builds on strong infrastructure investment trends highlighted in a recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value, which found that 58% of Indian organizations have increased infrastructure investments due to rising AI demand. The study also projected a 19% growth in infrastructure budgets in 2025, with 43% of organizations establishing or planning AI Centers of Excellence. As enterprises move from experimentation to scaled deployment, infrastructure readiness is emerging as a strategic priority.

With the establishment of this center, IBM further strengthens India’s position as a critical engine for AI infrastructure innovation supporting enterprises in building secure, scalable and future-ready AI systems.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

Media Contact:

Prasanna SR (prasanna.s.r@ibm.com)

Aakanksha Ahlawat (Aakanksha.Ahlawat@ibm.com)

AI Meets Governance: IBM Launches Lucknow Centre

IBM has officially announced the inauguration of its AI GovTech Innovation Centre in Lucknow on February 22, 2026. The initiative is designed to position AI as core infrastructure for modern governance, helping governments tackle rising citizen expectations, regulatory complexity, and exponential data growth.

Key Highlights

• Purpose: The centre will serve as a collaborative platform to design, validate, and scale trusted AI solutions for governance, focusing on productivity, transparency, and service delivery.
• Location: Situated at Platinum Mall in Sushant Golf City, Lucknow, the facility has a 500-seat capacity and marks IBM’s first software lab in Northern India.
• Focus Areas: Generative AI and Agentic AI technologies, with applications tailored for government and enterprise use cases.
• Leadership Presence: The inauguration was attended by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, and IBM India MD Sandip Patel.
• Strategic Vision: Yogi Adityanath emphasized that the centre will strengthen tech-driven governance and highlighted Uttar Pradesh’s ambitions in deep tech, robotics, drone technology, medical technology, and quantum computing.

Why It Matters

This centre positions Lucknow as a growing hub for GovTech innovation in India, aligning with the state’s roadmap to lead in AI and quantum computing. It also reflects IBM’s broader strategy to embed AI into public sector infrastructure, ensuring scalable and replicable solutions for governance worldwide.

“AI will define the next era of government effectiveness and economic competitiveness. Around the world, and especially in India, we are seeing governments move decisively from exploration to execution. It is encouraging to see this level of openness to responsible AI adoption,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, IBM. “The Lucknow center brings together IBM’s global AI leadership and a strong local talent ecosystem, with proximity to leading engineering and academic institutions. Together, this enables us to translate AI ambition into measurable public impact,” he added.

IBM and Andhra Pradesh Govt Collaborate on Indigenous AI Technology Stack

The Government of Andhra Pradesh has announced a major collaboration with IBM, BharatGen, and NxtGen to build a “Swadeshi Sovereign AI Stack”—a framework designed to deliver citizen-centric digital services in regional languages like Telugu.

Key Highlights of the Collaboration

• Sovereign AI Framework: The initiative focuses on creating an AI stack that unifies models, government datasets, institutional data, software platforms, and deployment tools into one cohesive system.
• Citizen-Centric Services: Tailored AI solutions will be developed for governance and service delivery, with emphasis on accessibility in local languages.
• Strategic Inputs: IBM, BharatGen, and NxtGen will provide technical and strategic guidance on design, architecture, and operating models.
• Cultural & Linguistic Context: The stack is intended to strengthen India’s AI capabilities by embedding linguistic diversity and cultural relevance into its foundation.
• Deployment Flexibility: It can run on sovereign cloud platforms or on-premises data centers, ensuring data control and security.

Broader Implications

• Governance: Enhanced transparency and efficiency in public service delivery.
• Innovation Ecosystem: Andhra Pradesh positions itself as a hub for responsible and applied AI, potentially boosting startups and local tech industries.
• Digital Sovereignty: Reduces reliance on foreign AI systems by building indigenous capabilities.

BharatGen

BharatGen is India’s first sovereign generative AI ecosystem, launched to create foundational models that reflect the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity. Its mission is to build large language models (LLMs), speech systems, and computer vision tools that can operate across India’s 22+ official languages. By assembling one of the largest open datasets in the country, BharatGen aims to empower public service delivery, education, and citizen engagement through AI that is truly indigenous. The initiative is positioned as a cornerstone for India’s digital sovereignty, reducing dependence on foreign AI systems and ensuring that governance tools are culturally and linguistically aligned with the population.

NxtGen

NxtGen is a Bengaluru‑based sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure provider, specializing in secure, scalable platforms that operate free from foreign jurisdiction. It runs SpeedCloud® (public cloud) and SpeedCloud Supreme (private cloud), offering enterprises and governments flexible deployment options. Recently, NxtGen established a national‑scale sovereign AI factory powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and Vertiv’s advanced data center systems, enabling AI training and inference at population scale. Its infrastructure is designed to host and deploy indigenous AI models like those from BharatGen, ensuring that India’s digital future is built on sovereign, secure, and locally controlled technology.

Together, BharatGen and NxtGen complement IBM’s expertise by providing the AI models and the sovereign cloud infrastructure needed to operationalize Andhra Pradesh’s Swadeshi Sovereign AI Stack.

IBM Launches Open Tech to Keep AI Data in Local Hands

IBM has launched Sovereign Core, an open-source software stack designed to give enterprises and governments full control over AI workloads, ensuring compliance, regulatory oversight, and operational autonomy in the era of digital sovereignty. This marks IBM’s push to address growing concerns about data governance and sovereignty as AI adoption accelerates worldwide.

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What is IBM Sovereign Core?

• Launch date: January 15–19, 2026
• Nature: Open-source based software stack
• Purpose: Build, deploy, and manage AI-ready sovereign environments
• Target users: Enterprises, governments, and service providers needing strict compliance and control

 Key features

• Open source foundation: Transparency and adaptability
• AI-ready sovereignty: Built for data control and compliance
• Operational autonomy: Maintain complete authority over infrastructure
• Regulatory compliance: Aligns with evolving global data sovereignty rules
• Auditable governance: Verifiable tools for oversight

Why it matters

• Digital sovereignty pressure: Keep sensitive data within boundaries
• AI amplifies risks: Larger datasets complicate compliance
• Global trend: Countries tightening data residency and AI governance

Benefits vs challenges

Benefits	Challenges/Risks
Full control over AI infrastructure	Requires technical expertise to deploy/manage
Compliance with sovereignty laws	Potentially higher costs vs cloud-native solutions
Open-source transparency	Integration with legacy systems may be complex
Auditable governance	Regulatory frameworks differ across regions

Implications for enterprises & governments

• Enterprises: Deploy AI without violating sovereignty laws
• Governments: Tools to enforce national data control policies
• Service providers: Offer sovereign-compliant AI services

Strategic outlook

IBM’s Sovereign Core positions the company as a leader in sovereign AI infrastructure, competing with hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, who are also investing in sovereignty solutions. The open-source approach may attract adoption in regions like Europe and India, where sovereignty regulations are tightening.

In short

IBM Sovereign Core is a major step toward keeping AI workloads compliant, secure, and under full organizational control—essential as digital sovereignty becomes a global priority.

Karnataka Bank Modernizes Digital Infrastructure with IBM Cloud Pak, Cuts Costs by 30%

Karnataka Bank Limited (KBL), one of India’s leading 'A' Class Scheduled Commercial Banks, collaborated with IBM to modernize its digital banking infrastructure using IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on Red Hat OpenShift. Implemented by IBM ecosystem partner, Fyrii, along with IBM Customer Success Team, the transformation enabled Karnataka Bank to establish a secure, scalable, and agile Application Programming Interface (API) platform while reducing total cost of ownership and reinforcing its digital foundation.

Through this collaborative innovation, Karnataka Bank developed a modern, secure, and scalable API platform that reinforces the bank’s digital infrastructure while reducing operational costs. This platform enables quicker rollout of services such as digital payments, loan processing, and third-party integrations, while maintaining secure connections with multiple systems both internally and externally.

This marks a major milestone in our digital journey, said Venkat Krishnan, Chief Information Officer, Karnataka Bank Limited. With IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on Red Hat OpenShift, we now have an agile and secure platform that allows us to scale operations across India, simplify system management, and reduce costs—all while improving the overall customer experience. 

The upgraded API infrastructure strengthens security while boosting scalability by 50% and cutting operational costs by 30%. These gains come from migrating to an optimized container‑based platform purpose‑built for efficient microservices. The framework enables the bank to implement digital gateways to manage all API traffic. It also allows external partners to access the bank’s AI foundation models as APIs via AI Gateway. This facilitates seamless communication between internal, external and cloud systems while ensuring smooth integration with UIDAI, CERSAI, GST, Reg-Tech and CBDT services. The streamlined implementation process supports rapid adaptation to evolving market conditions and regulatory requirements.

Today’s banking sector is more complex than ever, comprising many systems and data sources in constant use. To stay ahead, banks require intelligent automation that not only streamlines operations but also anticipates issues before they arise. Karnataka Bank’s modernization showcases how intelligent automation and integrated systems can reduce complexity, boost efficiency and accelerate the delivery of secure, reliable digital services at scale, said Viswanath Ramaswamy, Vice President, Technology, IBM India & South Asia.

The implementation was led by Fyrii, with IBM’s Expert Labs supporting the critical phases of the rollout. The project is a key pillar of Karnataka Bank’s broader digital transformation strategy, Startup@100, which emphasizes agility and innovation as the bank celebrates 100 years of service.

Commenting on the collaboration Padma Subramanian, Co-founder and CEO, Fyrii said, “As IBM’s implementation partner, we at Fyrii are proud to support Karnataka Bank’s modernization journey by leveraging our Unified Fintech Platform alongside IBM Cloud Pak for Integration. This collaboration with IBM and Karnataka Bank demonstrates how we at Fyrii use our platform to accelerate digital transformation with greater agility and secure API enablement, helping form a foundation for the bank to innovate and serve customers seamlessly.”

About Karnataka Bank Limited

Established in 1924 and headquartered in Mangaluru, Karnataka Bank Limited is a premier private sector bank in India. As of 2025, the bank operates a network of 957 branches, 1,188 ATMs and cash recyclers, and 588 e-lobbies/mini e-lobbies across 22 states and 2 union territories, serving over 11 million customers nationwide.

Karnataka Bank offers a comprehensive suite of digital banking solutions, including KBL Mobile Plus, KBL mPassbook, BHIM KBL UPI App, KBL POS Manager, and KBL MoneyClick Internet Banking. In its centenary year, the bank continues to embrace technology-led innovation through its 'Startup@100' vision, aiming to enhance customer experiences and drive financial inclusion across the country.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs, and gain a competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

IBM’s New ‘Nighthawk’ Quantum Chip Targets Advantage by 2026

IBM has unveiled its most advanced quantum processor yet, the Nighthawk chip, a 120-qubit design with 218 tunable couplers, aimed at achieving quantum advantage as early as 2026.

This marks a major milestone in IBM’s roadmap toward fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2029.

Key highlights of IBM’s Nighthawk quantum chip

• Quantum advantage goal: IBM believes Nighthawk could demonstrate quantum advantage—where quantum computers outperform classical ones—by next year.
• 120 qubits + 218 couplers: The chip uses a square lattice design to connect qubits with tunable couplers, enabling 30% more circuit complexity while reducing error rates.
• Error correction research: Alongside Nighthawk, IBM introduced the Loon chip, which experiments with vertical qubit connections and fault-tolerant components.
• Software integration: IBM rolled out a faster quantum software stack, dynamic circuits in Qiskit, and a quantum advantage tracker to benchmark progress.
• Manufacturing leap: The company has shifted to 300mm wafer fabrication, doubling development speed and scaling quantum hardware production.
• Long-term roadmap: IBM aims to deliver large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum systems by 2029, positioning itself as a leader in practical quantum computing.

Why this matters

• Scientific impact: Nighthawk’s design allows execution of circuits with up to 5,000 two-qubit gates, opening doors to solving problems classical supercomputers cannot.
• Business applications: Industries like finance, pharmaceuticals, and climate modeling could benefit from faster, more accurate simulations.
• Global competition: IBM’s announcement intensifies the race with Google, Microsoft, and startups, all vying to claim the first verifiable quantum advantage.

The big picture

IBM’s Nighthawk isn’t just another chip—it’s a strategic bet on scaling quantum computing from lab experiments to real-world applications.

By combining hardware advances with software optimization and error correction, IBM is laying the groundwork for a future where quantum systems become indispensable tools in science, industry, and security.

Next step

Would you like a side-by-side HTML comparison of IBM vs Google vs Microsoft quantum approaches for quick publishing?

IBM Enters Crypto World with New Platform for Banks and Governments

IBM has launched “Digital Asset Haven,” a crypto custody platform tailored for banks, governments, and large enterprises, marking its formal entry into institutional blockchain infrastructure.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of what IBM’s new platform offers and why it matters:

What Is Digital Asset Haven?

• Launch Date: October 27, 2025
• Purpose: Secure, compliant custody and transaction services for digital assets
• Target Clients: Financial institutions, government entities, and large corporations

Key Features

• Multi-Blockchain Support: Custody, transfer, and settlement across 40+ blockchains
• Wallet Management: Integrated wallet infrastructure with policy-based governance
• Compliance Tools: Built-in KYC and AML frameworks
• SaaS Rollout: Initially offered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
• Partnerships: Developed with Dfns, a French wallet infrastructure firm

Strategic Context

• Supports the emerging $10 trillion tokenization economy
• Includes Bitcoin custody and tokenized payments
• Marks IBM’s shift from experimental blockchain efforts to regulated infrastructure

Implications

• For Institutions: Trusted, enterprise-grade solution for digital asset management
• For IBM: Positions IBM as a serious contender in blockchain infrastructure

After winding down earlier blockchain efforts (like IBM Food Trust), this marks a renewed, enterprise-focused push. It targets the same institutional segment as Fireblocks, Anchorage, and BitGo, but with IBM’s legacy in enterprise trust and compliance.

IBM plans to integrate AI-driven risk scoring and predictive compliance analytics by mid-2026.

Architecture & Technology Stack

• Core Infrastructure: Built on IBM Cloud and IBM Hyper Protect Services with confidential computing and hardware-based encryption
• MPC Wallets: Uses multi-party computation (MPC) for keyless custody and distributed signing
• API-First Design: RESTful APIs for integration with banking systems and blockchain networks
• Smart Contract Support: Compatible with Ethereum, Solana, and other programmable chains

Security & Compliance

• Regulatory Alignment: Meets Basel III, MiCA, and FATF Travel Rule standards
• Audit Trails: Immutable logging and real-time monitoring for compliance and forensic analysis
• Geo-Fencing & Access Controls: Location-based restrictions and role-based access

Strategic Partnerships

• Dfns Integration: IBM leverages Dfns’ MPC wallet infrastructure with 15M+ wallets deployed
• Enterprise Pilots: Early adopters include central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and tier-1 institutions
• Tokenization Ecosystem: Supports CBDCs, tokenized bonds, and real-world asset custody

Use Cases

• Bitcoin Custody: Secure storage and transfer for institutional BTC portfolios
• Tokenized Payments: Programmable payments using stablecoins and tokenized fiat
• Cross-Chain Settlement: Asset movement across Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and private chains

Strategic Implications

• IBM’s Reentry into Blockchain: A shift from earlier experimental efforts to regulated infrastructure
• Competitive Positioning: Competes with Fireblocks, Anchorage, and BitGo in institutional custody
• Future Expansion: Plans to add AI-driven risk scoring and predictive compliance analytics by mid-2026